MBA备考商务英语泛读文选全集(21)
网络资源 免费考研网/2009-01-16
Driving force: Henry Ford (1780 words)
After the Model Ts enormous success, the two visionaries
from rural Michigan became friends and business partners.
Ford asked Edison to develop an electric storage battery
for the car and funded the effort with $1.5 million.
Ironically, despite all his other great inventions, Edison
never perfected the storage battery. Yet Ford immortalized
his mentors inventive genius by building the Edison
Institute in Dearborn.
Fords great strength was the manufacturing process-not
invention. Long before he started a car company, he was an
inveterate tinkerer, known for picking up loose scraps of
metal and wire and turning them into machines. Hed been
putting cars together since 1891. Although by no means the
first popular automobile, the Model T showed the world just
how innovative Ford was at combining technology and
markets.
The companys assembly line alone threw Americas
Industrial Revolution into overdrive. Instead of having
workers put together the entire car, Fords cronies, who
were great tool- and die-makers from Scotland, organized
teams that added parts to each Model T as it moved down a
line. By the time Fords sprawling Highland Park plant was
humming along in 1914, the worlds first automatic conveyor
belt could churn out a car every 93 minutes.
(未完待续)